Youth & Sunday School 
Sunday School Administration
Establishing a format for continuing the Sunday School program. This has to be a joint effort.Dear Church Family:
I agreed to help get the Sunday School running again. I have been on the Stewardship Committee and, through it, I have committed myself to help us at St. Augustine’s become a more visible and supportive force for the improvement of our neighborhood of West Oakland. I am convinced that God’s dream for St. Augustine’s is to be a beacon of God’s love in this community.
I support the idea that we are a family church with a strong church family. The family includes all the children in our midst. In fact, the echo of many voices in our congregation rings in my ears: “the children are our future!” I have also heard sentimental agreements that “it takes a village to raise a child.”
Today these statements have been verified in your presence! We are the village... and the children are waiting! God’s dream for us is that we raise our children to become leaders in the village – our church. And, we do that best by example.
Ours has to be an active, intentional guidance to the children. They hear what we do far better than hearing what we say! However, the voices of the popular media speak far louder than our passive voices. Thus, it is urgent that we seek to be a powerful, focused voice in their lives. Our most formidable competition for their attention is represented by the brainwash of mindless consumerism. Our time with them will compete favorably with the market’s appeal to greed and the accumulation of “things”. We have to rise to the occasion!
There are lots of things we cannot do for the children. However, what we can do for and with them is sufficient to get their attention. We can do a few things as individuals. But, together we can do much more than the sum of the individual parts. I am asking you to take upon yourselves the Lenten commitment of caring for our children. There are many possibilities:
1. First of all, I ask you to pray for our children, daily: Gather them up in your arms and take the armful to God. Tell God what you think of them. Talk to God about what you would like them to become, (individually and collectively). Ask God to show you what they need and for the guidance to provide whatever you can, to help meet their needs.
2. Endeavor to take them under your wing and occasionally do something special for and with them. The Sunday school leaders will compile a list of possible projects and/or tasks.
3. Let us get together after Easter and explore a possible program for the rest of the year. We can provide a town hall forum after church for such a discussion.
4. In the meanwhile, tell me what you think we should do, individually and collectively, for and with the children.
5. I want to be able to take the children on at least four outings into nature, (including our annual summer camping trip), for which we would solicit drivers to facilitate the outings. These could include: a snow trip, a beach trip and a walk in the woods during our annual parish retreat. We must make every effort to get the children to our annual parish retreat.
6. I am committed to the Bishop’s concept of the Area Ministry and want to strengthen our response to it. The area ministry does exist, although many of us may not yet recognize it. St. Augustine’s has been doing it for ever, since we were at 27th and West. Today we need to recognize what we do in the community, so that the children may appreciate their value to the community, through such things as our annual visit to the senior center during Thanksgiving.
And, while we are at it, we should take time to consider how much we can learn from the children. One African tradition teaches us that each child born into our community arrives with a special message from the ancestors, contained in that child’s personality. “Spear the rod and spoil the child” is not an African concept. The spirit of our ancestors encourages us to respect and honor the child, so that he/she would grow up with the sense of dignity that they would learn from being respected and honored.
God has entrusted each one of these children to us, for us to care for. And, Jesus reminds us that one has to become like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. At my age, I increasingly appreciate the opportunity children provide us in teaching us how to be a child, after all these years of forgetting our own example, from our own distant childhood.
Let us bless the Lord, through our service to the children – our future! Thanks be to God!
David Romain, March 2, 2010
